Outside, the sky was so bright, it had lost any hint of blue—just a white expanse broken up by a few high wisps of clouds. Inside Nick’s car, it was just as neat as it had been the night he drove me home. It still had the same scent—leather and Windex.
He cranked the engine and backed up, then headed down the driveway. Before pulling out onto the road, he stopped and flipped his sun visor down. A CD fell into his hand and he slid it into a slot just underneath the radio.
“I didn’t know old cars had CD players.”
“They don’t. I had to add it. Can’t use Bluetooth in something this old, so I stick with CDs while I’m driving.”
“Who are we listening to?” He pressed the scan button and stopped at track eight.
“I’m continuing your musical education. This, my dear Evan, is Josh Ritter. He will change your world.”
I turned to face out the window. “We’ll see.”
Out on the road, he rolled the windows down, and a voice streamed from the speakers, soft and melodic at first, then stronger until the voice filled the car and poured out of the open windows. There was acoustic guitar, then drums, then a strong bass line. It was so full and so close, I felt like I could reach out and touch it.
Nick said something to me, but I couldn’t hear him. He’d passed the Gas-N-Go, but I didn’t care. I didn’t really want a slushie anyway.
“What?” My hair whipped around my face and I pulled it away from my mouth.
“I said you’re smiling.”
I tried to wipe it away, but I couldn’t. It was the music and the breeze. It was the air, all light and feathery. It was Nick.
He turned off the highway onto the next road, the one that went past the Icebox. At the end of the road—desolate except for straight rows of pecan trees off to the left and a few horses in the distance behind a fence—he pulled over to the side of the road and climbed out.
“What are you doing?”
He walked in front of the car and opened my door. “Time to switch.”
“Switch what?” I asked, but my fingers were already unbuckling my seat belt.
“You want to drive?”
I stood next to him and smoothed my hands down the front of my T-shirt. No one else was around. No questions, no one to worry.
“Yes.”
He tossed me the keys. I caught them and crossed behind the car and sat down.
“Okay, this is a lesson. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Rule number one?”
I stretched the seat belt across my chest and buckled it. “Check.”
“See? You’re already a pro. This’ll be a piece of cake.”
He grinned, but I didn’t. All of a sudden the courage and boldness I’d felt seconds before scattered, leaving me terrified. I was sitting in the driver’s seat of Nick’s car, next to him, and I had no idea what to do. It hadn’t felt like this when I was driving with Gus.
“You okay?” I knew he was watching me, but I couldn’t turn and face him. “It’s fine. You’ll do great. I’ll talk you through it.”
My fingers were tight around the steering wheel.
“Evan. Look at me.” I turned to him. “You’re fine. I’m here.”
“Okay.” I relaxed my fingers one by one, wiggling them a little before gripping the wheel again, but this time not as tightly. “I can do this.”
“Yeah, you can.” He laughed. He was way too chipper about this. “It’ll be fun. You’ll see. Okay, foot on the break. No, your right foot. Tuck your left one away—you’re not going to use that one at all.”
“What? Why not use one foot for each pedal. Two feet, two pedals.”
“It’s just . . . that’s not how you do it. Trust me. You’ll wear out your brake pads if you do that. Just pretend your left foot doesn’t exist.”
“Whatever,” I muttered under my breath, but I pulled my left foot away from the pedal.
“Now, gearshift.” He pointed. “Slide it into Drive. There you go. Now you’re in business.” He sat back in his seat and flopped one arm out the window. “Let’s fly. Well, maybe don’t fly. Just give her a little gas.”
The car crept down the road at a sloth’s pace, but we were moving.
“It’s okay to go a little faster.”
I pressed my foot harder on the gas and the car responded. After a moment, we were cruising at twenty miles per hour.
“You’re doing great. You should’ve seen me at my first driving lesson. Dad took me to the back of the IKEA parking lot at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning. It was deserted, or so I thought . . .”
As he told the story of his first driving experience, my nerves leaked away and I felt that hint of freedom again. I didn’t even mind the heat blazing in the windows. After a moment, I took my left hand off the steering wheel and hung my arm out the window. The wind flowed between my fingers and across my skin. It was delicious.
Nick’s head was leaned back against the seat and his eyes were closed.
“Um, shouldn’t you be watching the road?”
He shook his head. “I’m not the one driving. And you’re doing fine. Nothing ahead of you but the road.”
It was true. The road was empty, and it stretched ahead until it disappeared around a curve. The trees were closer to the road now, creating a sort of canopy above.
He sighed. “This is so great.”
They were just words—four simple little words—but they made my stomach do that funny fluttery thing. I bit my lip to keep from smiling too big. It was great. It was more than great—it was amazing. And he knew it too.
“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”
“Everything’s just been so messed up lately. At my old school, with my mom, with . . .” He ran his hand through his dark hair. “I feel like I can relax here. It’s nice.”
Up ahead, a car rounded a curve and headed toward us. It was in its own lane, but it felt way too close to me. I instinctively slowed down and inched the car closer to the edge of the road.
“Keep it in the middle,” he murmured.
The car zoomed past me without incident and I let out the breath I’d been holding.
“Everyone was just asking me so many questions all the time,” he continued. “‘What are your plans? What do you want to do with your life? Where are we headed?’” His knee bobbed up and down. “I mean, just . . . let me be, you know?”
I nodded like I had a clue what he was talking about. Then his phone, sitting in the cup holder between us, buzzed with a text. He grabbed it and checked the screen. I didn’t mean to look, but it was right there, glowing and visible, and my eyes slid to the right involuntarily.
The name at the top said Cassidy.
I’m sorry about all the drama. I miss you. At least let me know you’re alive and well in Alabama. xoxo.
Cassidy? xoxo? I wasn’t stupid. I knew what that meant.
He sighed, exhaling air out in a thin stream. “Anyway, when Dad told me about Perry, I couldn’t think of anything better than to just get out of town. Get away from it all.” He laughed, but it sounded tired. “You’re pretty easy to relax with, kid. You don’t ask me so many questions.”
Something in my chest felt both hard and soft at the same time. I was mad—here I was, driving this car with this boy, feeling a freedom I’d never experienced, yet here he was, getting a flirty text from someone named Cassidy. Then again, he turned the screen off and dropped the phone back in the cup holder. His only response to her was a heavy sigh. That was something.
“You have to quit it with this kid business, you know.”
He laughed and this time it was lighter. Maybe I really did help him relax. Forget. “You got it.”
When we got home, Mom was pulling weeds out of the front flower bed. She always said she didn’t mind pulling weeds because she liked to see the immediate results—clean, clear space instead of uninvited intruders. When she turned around and saw me in the driver’s seat of Nick’s car, I felt like the uninvited intrud
er.
Nick cursed under his breath. “We should have stopped and switched places. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“It’s fine, it’s . . .” But it wasn’t. Mom was walking toward the car, her mouth a firm line. I unbuckled my seat belt and opened the door. Nick did the same.
“Ms. McBride, it was my fault,” he said before I could speak. “I asked her if she wanted—”
“Thank you, Nick. You can go now.”
“I—”
“Why don’t you head on back to your house. I’ll talk with your dad later.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He walked in front of the car to the driver’s side. “Sorry,” he whispered when he was next to me.
“It’s okay,” I whispered back. “It was fun.” Understatement of the year.
He flashed a quick smile, then climbed in the car and backed out of the driveway.
Mom stared at me, one eyebrow raised. I wanted her to say something, but she didn’t.
“I know, I know. It’s bad.”
Still nothing.
“I’m sorry?”
“Did we not just have a conversation about driving? ‘I’ll think about it’ does not mean yes. You are not old enough to make the decision to get behind the wheel of a car and drive. Do you understand that?”
“Yes. I do. Really, I’m sorry. It’s just . . .”
“Just what?” Her eyes were wide, her voice pleading, like she really wanted to understand.
I took a deep breath, held it a moment, then let it out without speaking. I was stuck in that place again, feeling like I couldn’t talk to her about something as mystifying as my heart.
“Oh, honey.” She put her arm around my shoulder and turned me back toward the house. “Being young is weird. It’s hard and confusing, but at the same time it’s . . . spectacular. Does that sound about right?”
“Spectacular might be a stretch, but yeah, something like that.”
She gave a small half smile. “I remember.”
At the top of the porch steps, she held the screen door open for me. I took a step away, then paused and turned back to her. “So . . . does this mean I’m not in trouble?”
“Oh, you are, don’t worry. I’ll have a list of chores ready for you before bed. And that’ll be on top of your regular duties at the shop.” She crossed the hall into the kitchen and filled a glass with water. “You might as well rest up. You have a big week ahead of you.”
In my bedroom the late-afternoon sun slashed long beams of light across the hardwood floor. My bed seemed more inviting than ever. I stretched myself across it and rolled over onto my back. The ceiling was crisscrossed with shifting shadows from the crepe myrtle outside my window and the fan swirled on high. Despite the chores, I was looking forward to the week. I may not see Nick—Mom would probably make sure of that—but inside, my heart was feeling pretty spectacular.
CHAPTER 22
One current gardening trend is to design modern, stylistic gardens with austere lines and hyper-defined borders. This is all fine and good, but remember that gardening is meant to be relaxing, regardless of how loose or rigid your space is. The best gardens leave room for surprises.
—DR. JULIUS GRISSOM, THE GRISSOM GUIDE
GUS
I’d already been watching myself carefully when the grocery store debacle happened. Oh, I made it through the store just fine. It was the trip home that got me. And to make matters worse, I lied to Jessie about it—told her I was just in a hurry to season the chicken—but I knew she saw right through it. I was trying so hard not to slip up, but sometimes I just couldn’t manage to hold it together. What was happening was bigger than me.
The day before the grocery store, I found Jessie gathering the recipe cards I’d left strewn all over her kitchen table. Why I’d taken them out of their box, I had no idea, but she gently stacked them and slid them back in the box within their appropriate tabs—soups, poultry, desserts, and the like. She didn’t say a word about it. I almost wanted her to, wanted to unburden myself of the weight of truth I’d come to understand, but it would have been too much. I kept quiet instead, waiting for the right time to let her know.
And that was my plan until the water almost pulled me under. I’d gone back over to my house to lie down for a little while. I tried to nap, but the sleep was fitful and unsatisfying. Something kept knocking on the door to my mind, an insistent tap-tap-tap that kept jerking me awake.
Finally I sat up, damp hair plastered to my forehead and the back of my neck. It was when I swiveled my hips to set my feet on the floor that I noticed the water. It rushed around the bottom of the couch and the legs of my kitchen chairs. Fear clawed across my skin. I tried to yell, but if any sound escaped, I couldn’t hear it for the loud pounding of water, like a huge waterfall had somehow materialized in one of my back bedrooms during the last hour. The couch was an island, the only dry surface in the whole house.
Some rational part of my brain told me this was a dream, that it was part of the burden I carried, but another part of me—the part that didn’t want to drown in my own house—broke into pieces. I tucked my legs under my chin, made myself into the tightest ball I could without wrenching my back, and I sat, rocking, waiting for the water to recede.
Sometime later—could have been hours, may have only been minutes—a knocking made its way to my ears over the sound of the water. After a few knocks, it became a pounding, more demanding than the tap-tap-tap that continued to stab my brain. The pounding was close by, almost sounded like it was inside me, but then the front door opened a crack and someone called my name.
“Gus, it’s me. Harvis. I’m coming in, okay?”
“No! Wait—the water . . .” I tried to warn him, to keep him from being swept under the waves as they rushed out the front door, but when he pushed the door open wider, nothing happened. The floor was dry as a bone.
He crossed the room in quick strides and sat next to me on the couch. I wrapped my arms around him, pressing my face into his chest. “Please don’t leave me.” My voice was a strangled whisper, startling me with its desperation.
He tightened his arms around me. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“But the water . . . ,” I managed.
He leaned back to look at me full in the face. “What water?”
I checked the floor again. “It was . . . it was everywhere.”
“There’s no water. It’s all dry. Everything’s fine.”
I didn’t quite believe him, but his eyes were so clear and soft, I kept my gaze there, using them as a lifeline to pull me back to what I took for actual reality. When I peeked at the floor a moment, it was still dry.
He unclenched my white-knuckled fingers from around his arm. “I’ll be right back.”
He fiddled around in the kitchen, opening cabinets, and turned the water faucet on. While he did whatever he was doing, he talked—just idle chat about Loretta and something stuck in her hoof. By now I was clearheaded enough to know he was talking only to calm me down. Well, that and possibly to distract us both from the fact that mere seconds before we’d been locked in an embrace that might make a teenager blush. But rather than feeling racy, his arms around me had felt like protection.
When he sat back down next to me, he held a damp, cool dishcloth to my cheek. I took it from him and pressed it to my forehead, then my neck. In my chest my heart slowly returned to its normal speed.
He reached over to the coffee table and opened a Ziploc bag with four fluffy biscuits in it. He broke off a piece and handed it to me.
“How’d you get ahold of those?” I’d recognize my own biscuits anywhere. They were taller and fluffier than anyone else’s and flecked with a smattering of black pepper across the top.
“I stopped by Jessie’s to get some details about this chandelier contraption she’s asked me to build for the gal getting married. She wrapped these up for me and said if I stopped by your house, you might give me some of your fresh apple jelly to go with them.” His right eye twitc
hed. It may have been an attempt at a wink, or possibly just a speck of dust.
“Oh, she did, did she?”
“She did. I saw the jar on your kitchen counter, and if you don’t mind, I’ll help myself to some as soon as I make sure you’re okay.”
I waved my hand in front of my face, swiping away the memory of my bungled-up reality, although my hands were still shaking. I clasped them together to keep him from noticing. “It was nothing. I’m completely fine, although that doesn’t mean I’m parting with any of my apple jelly.”
He laid his hand on top of mine. “Augusta,” he said quietly. “No more joking. Is it what I think it is?”
“Depends on what you’re thinking.” I pulled my hand away and reached for another chunk of biscuit. “But probably. Alzheimer’s, dementia, losing my marbles, coming unglued.” My voice caught on that last word and I swallowed hard. It was the first time I’d admitted to another person what I already knew to be true. Could he handle it?
I turned the biscuit over in my hands. Tom had known about my mother, of course, and about my grandmother, but he never liked to talk about it. I knew it pained him to think about the disease that would more than likely infiltrate my mind as well, and to be honest, I always worried a bit that the force of it would cause him to buckle. We never got the chance to see though. He died before any of it came to pass, and I’d carried the weight of my bad odds on my own in the years since. I admit it felt good to pass a small part of that weight to someone else.
I took a deep breath and dropped the crumbs back onto the plate.
“Does Jessie know?”
“No, and I don’t plan on telling her. Not until I have to, anyway. And I don’t want you to tell her either.”
“She’s your daughter. And she’s a grown woman. She can handle it.”
“I don’t need anyone worrying about me. Especially not my child.”
He stared hard at me. “You are the toughest woman I’ve ever met. I have no doubt some of that toughness trickled down to Jessie. You need to tell her. Have you been to see a doctor?”
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